Provocate

May 15 is the last IndyTalks event for the spring. It should be a great discussion of how making the city safer for kids on bikes will improve the quality of life for everyone. We have brewed a fresh batch of IndyTalks events for the 2nd half of 2013. Check them out ....

SPEA scholars organized a remarkable event at the Athenaeum April 30th — "Crafting for a Cause." Matthew Pope and the group of Scholars who organized the event — Rebekka Boustani, Sarah Gerke, Kyle Kerrigan, Kayli Schafer & Tiffany Tibbot — reflect on what happened, and why it matters so much. (Sarah Gerke provides the pictures.)

Matthew Pope reports on a Science on Tap talk by Purdue physicist Daniela Bortoletto. Sixty people were briefed on the discovery of the Higgs boson, a project Prof. Bortoletto helped lead. Matthew raises additional questions, and leaves dangling a geeky joke about nuclear physics.

In "How Robots And Social Entrepreneurs Can Work Side By Side To Fix The World," Alexa Clay and Jon Camfield conclude that bots can be useful tools for social entrepeneurs who seek to transform social systems by bypassing centralized authority structures. Matthew Pope takes the argument even further: Can robots themselves be social entrepreneurs? He raises a intriguing set of questions. Perhaps we'll get an answer from robotics researcher Selma Šabanović when she speaks at Science on Tap at City Market on May 15th.

Kick of summer with an engaging discussion of rocket science, with just a bit of math .... guaranteed to make it easier to understand, not harder. Make new friends at the Center for Inquiry. And bring your newly expanded science mind to Science on Tap @ City Market May 15th!

Nearly 50 years ago an undistinguished physicist named Peter Higgs had a goofy idea about the nature of the universe. Tens of thousands of scientists have spent hundreds of billions of dollars testing whether that idea is correct. Now some of those scientists are asking: why is the boson named after him and not one of us? A Purdue professor was a member of the discovery team, at the next Science on Tap let's ask if she thinks "the Bortoletto boson" would be better.

If we view robots as deserving the same empathy that humans deserve, could that mean we will start treating humans no better than robots? Find out from robotics research Selma Šabanović when she comes to Science on Tap @ City Market to discuss "Should you be friends with your robot?"

If you aren't an expert in micro-finance by the and of April, it's not because of lack of opportunities to learn. April 22 OBAT Helpers discusses Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus and their work in Bangladesh; April 23 Global Indy brings together other groups working on micro-loan projects in Indy and around the world.

You can discover the world in the dark, then start changing it when the lights go on.

Science on Tap (@ the Athenaeum this one time) explores deep brain stimulus as a non-drug treatment for diseases such as Alzheimer's, depression, MS ... and maybe to treat the disease we call the real world? Are their limits to what we should be contemplating and researching? Ask Matt Ward on April 17.